A month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the first major legislative action in response to the massacre and the toughest gun control lawin the nation. Called the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, the main provisions of the law include:

Bans possession of any high-capacity magazines regardless of when they were made or sold.

Requires ammunition dealers to do background checks, similar to those for gun buyers.

Requires New Yorkers who own assault weapons to register their guns with the state.

Requires any therapist who believes a mental health patient made a credible threat of harming others to report the threat to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Tightens the state’s description of an “assault” weapon to just one “military rifle” feature.

Requires background checks for all gun sales, including by private dealers.

A week later, the state’s assault-rifle owners are organizing a mass boycott of the new law, which promises to be the largest act of civil disobedience in New York state history.

Fredric U. Dicker reports for the New York Post, Jan. 21, 2013, that Brian Olesen, president of the American Shooters Supply, one of the largest gun dealers in the state, said “I’ve heard from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes.’’

Leaders of some of the state’s 300 gun clubs, gun dealers and Second Amendment organizations are organizing the boycott — and the heaviest interest is in Suffolk County, the Capital District and the Buffalo region, sources said.

Officials estimate at least 1 million semiautomatic rifles are owned in the state. And come April 15, 2014 — when Cuomo is expected to be running for re-election — they all have to be registered with the State Police.

But authorities don’t know who has them or where they are located because the rifles have been legal but unregistered until now.

State officials will be nervously watching the registration figures to see how many gun owners comply, sources said.

“Many of these assault-rifle owners aren’t going to register; we realize that,’’ said a Cuomo-administration source who added that officials expect “widespread violations’’ of the new law. Owners who refuse to registercould face a class-A misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in prison. The unregistered weapon could also be confiscated, which could be worth several thousands of dollars.

National Rifle Association President David Keene told The Post yesterday that he wasn’t surprised by the planned boycott: “While we don’t get involved in campaigns to resist the law, I will say this: Historic experience here and in Canada shows that when you try to force gun owners into a registration and licensing system, there’s usually mass opposition and mass noncompliance. I think it’s going to be very difficult for the governor to get mass compliance with this new law.”

The organizers point to a little-known guarantee of gun ownership contained in New York’s own “Civil Rights Law,” which was ratified the same year as the U.S. Constitution. The state statute says the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be infringed”— words that are stronger than the Second Amendment, which says it “shall not be infringed.’’

“They’re saying, ‘F— the governor! F— Cuomo! We’re not going to register our guns,’ and I think they’re serious. People are not going to do it. People are going to resist,’’ said State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King, a member of the NRA board of directors. “They’re taking one of our guaranteed civil rights, and they’re taking it away.’’

In the wake of the terrible massacre of 20 first-grade kiddies (and 6 adults) by an evil, likely-deranged lone gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the usual gun-control hyenas are braying.

This time, however, they may succeed in their gun control agenda, at least in getting assault weapons banned.

The Usual Hyenas:

CNN anchor Don Lemon (pic above) went on an anti-gun rant on Monday morning: “We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets. They should only be available to police officers and to hunt al-Qaeda and the Taliban and not hunt elementary school children.”

In a Twitter exchange on Saturday, MSNBC host Ed Schultzasked “Why should anyone own an assault rifle ?” and proposed a “confiscation of these types of weapons”. He also told one poster that “a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg renewed his perennial call for punitive federal gun control laws in the United States by lying that shooting deaths “only happen in America.” Not true. There have been shootings in other post-industrial societies, including Oslo, Norway; Winnendon, Germany; Kauhajoki, Finland; Beslan, Russia; Monash University, Australia; Dunblane, Scotland. (For those shootings, go here.)

Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel is calling for a nation-wide ban on assault weapons. When he was Obama’s COS, Emanuel famously said that “No crisis should go to waste.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein(D-Calif) has pledged to revive a law banning assault weapons at the opening of the next session of Congress in January.

Ominous Signs:

The powerful pro-2nd Amendment National Rifle Association (NRA) shut down their Facebook page and have not had any Twitter activity since the massacre on Friday morning. NRA officials have kept quiet. On Twitter, NRA president David Keene and NRA members have received death threats — calls for them to be shot. The irony of anti-gun people issuing death threats appears to be lost on everyone.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has been a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment rights with an A rating from the NRA — is signaling he’s changing his mind. On Monday outside the Virginia Capitol, Warner said: “I‘ve been a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. I’ve got an A rating from the NRA. But the status quo isn’t acceptable. I’ve got three daughters. They asked me on Friday evening, ‘Dad, what are you gonna do about this?’ There’s got to be a way to put reasonable restrictions, particularly as we look at assault weapons, as we look at these fast clips of ammunition.”

Obama’s Hypocrisy

Gun rights advocates believe Obama will now focus on making gun control a top issue; one said, “It’s in his DNA to push this issue. This would be his crowning achievement, if he can ban guns.”

What is noteworthy is that, despite Obama’s decrying of gun violence, since he has been president, prosecutions for breaking gun laws have diminished sharply — a drop of 40% since the zenith reached under George W. Bush, which was 11,000.

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Meanwhile, the American people are responding with an upsurge of gun purchases, even more than the marked increases in gun buying since Obama first occupied the White House.

In Colorado, for example, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation received 4,154 requests for background checks from potential gun buyers on Saturday, the day after the Connecticut shooting. That was so many the CBI couldn’t process them all and the backlog grew to nearly 18 hours. Extra staff was brought in over the weekend and workers are still trying to clear the backlog.